Synonymy in the domain of migration:

Sign of changing mentalities?1

Elpida Loupaki
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

Abstract
The aim of this paper is to investigate the phenomenon of synonymy in the domain of
migration terminology for the language pair English-Greek. Whereas traditional theory of
terminology focuses on normalization and thus discourages the existence of synonymous
terms, more recent studies using a socio-terminological perspective have demonstrated the
presence and even the importance, at cognitive level, of different denominations for the same
concept. This paper tries to explore another perspective of synonymy: by analyzing, both
manually and automatically, a corpus of texts related to migration we examine the social and
translational factors behind the proliferation of some synonyms and question whether their
existence could be related with a change in mentalities to such a sensitive issue as migration.

Keywords
Migration terminology, synonymy, IATE project, corpus analysis, terminology management

This work is licensed under a Creative

Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

1
A prior version of this article has been presented at the NATO Conference on Terminology Management, in
Brussels (19-20 November 2015).

Parallèles – numéro 30(2), octobre 2018 DOI 10.17462/para.2018.02.02

Elpida Loupaki Synonymy in the domain of migration: Sign of changing mentalities?

1. Introduction: Research motivation

Migration has always been closely intertwined with humanity. Migration flows change in
relation to economic, social or political factors; in this context Greece, which, at the beginning
of the 20th century, experienced outward migration from its borders now faces the reverse
flow. According to data from FRONTEX,2 Greece is the major gateway for migrants and asylum
seekers entering Europe from Asia and Africa.
As is usually the case, new realities give birth to new terms or collocations in language and we
are currently experiencing a proliferation of new terms describing the domain of migration
and its different aspects. For instance, in English, relatively new terms such as ‘hot spot’, ‘brain
drain’ and ‘asylum shopping’ are coined, the Greek equivalent of which is not always
standardized.
During the academic year 2013-14, I undertook a project with my Master’s students in
translation at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, in cooperation with the TermCoord Unit
of the European Parliament. The aim of the project was to feed the IATE database with new
entries for the language pair English-Greek from the domain of migration.3 At the end of the
project, together with a small group of Master’s and PhD students, we started working on a
new project on corpora building. The idea was to build different sub-corpora and study the
terminology of migration in each sub-field. During this stage, different synonymy phenomena
were observed in the Greek language. The main motivation for this paper is to explore this
preliminary observation.
In the following sections I will attempt to investigate the phenomenon of synonymy in the
domain of migration, as observed in the English-Greek language pair. To do so, I will start with
a general overview of the concept of synonymy as defined from different theoretical angles,
then study the texts of our corpus and their special characteristics. Furthermore, specific
examples from the corpus will be presented and the relation between synonymous terms will
be investigated. Finally, a discussion of the findings will follow. My approach is descriptive and
focuses on both textual and terminological aspects.

2. Synonymy in terminology
In general linguistics there is no such phenomenon as absolute synonymy in language (Palmer,
1976, p. 60; Charalambakis, 1992, p. 42). General linguistics understand absolute synonyms to
be lexical items that can be used interchangeably in all linguistic environments, without any
functional or stylistic difference. Following structuralism, traditional theory of terminology
shares the view that terms should be used unambiguously in specialized communication and
argues that each scientific term should be clearly defined and represent one concept (Kuryško,
1993; Wüster, 1979)4. This prescriptive and normative perspective leads to the so called
“univocity principle”5.

2
Data available on the webpage of the International Organization of Migration (IOM):
http://greece.iom.int/el/node/30 (last accessed 5/1/17).
3
For a detailed presentation of our IATE project, cf. Loupaki E. & Maslias R. (2017).
4
For a comprehensive presentation of the connections between Saussurian structuralism and traditional
terminology, see Rita Temmerman (1997).
5
For an interesting study about the influence of this concept to specialized dictionaries, cf. Kerremans (2010).

Parallèles – numéro 30(2), octobre 2018 23

Elpida Loupaki Synonymy in the domain of migration: Sign of changing mentalities?

In the last twenty years, socio-cognitive, descriptive, and corpus-based approaches to

terminology have challenged the univocity principle. According to Teresa Cabré, in her classic
book Terminology. Theory, Methods and Applications, “… in reality there are alternative
designations for a single concept and the designation of two different concepts can coincide
even within the special field” (1998, p. 109). Moreover, she distinguishes four main categories
of synonyms in terminology: (a) absolute equivalents, where terminological units belong in the
same historical language and the same formal register, (b) semantic equivalent units, where
one form is derived from the other (for example initialisms or abbreviations), (c) synonyms of
different registers, where we find, for instance, the scientific and popular name of the same
concept and finally (d) variants of the same term, where differences in spelling are observed.
A more recent categorization of synonymy from Fernandez-Silva, Freixa and Cabré (2008)
distinguishes five types of synonymy: (a) term and artificial form, (b) term and acronym, (c)
spelling change, (d) reduction and (e) lexical change. Furthermore, descriptive approaches to
terminology share the view that terms are subject to denominative variation, i.e., variation
affecting the form of the term, also known as terminological variation (Fernandez-Silva &
Kerremans, 2011, p. 319).
The reasons behind this variation are numerous and can be related to the communication
setting, the level of specification, the author’s stylistic choices, or even social factors. For
instance, Cabré has developed the principle of polyhedral or multifaceted perspective of the
concept. Following this principle, any concept can be perceived through different angles and
thus it can originate different denominations in the same language community (Cabré 2003;
Freixa, Fernandez-Silva & Cabré, 2008). Furthermore, Freixa noted that “denominative
variation occurs more often in less specialized texts” (2002, as referred in Kerremans 2010,
p. 8). One question reasonably arises here: how many denominations can we have for the
same concept and still insure an efficient communication?
According to some scholars the proliferation of synonyms can sometimes be problematic. In
their case study about synonymy in Italian, in the special domain of digital terrestrial television,
Bertaccini, Massari and Castagnoli make a distinction between “physiological” and
“pathological” synonymy (2010, p. 16). Borrowed from medical jargon, these adjectives
describe synonymy that may be functionally motivated in contrast to synonymy that causes
confusion.6 Moreover, for some others, synonymy could reflect the lack of harmonization and
standardization or the absence of a linguistic policy and it is typical for domains which are
subject to profound changes (Mayer, 2002, p. 118, as referred in Bertaccini et al., 2010, p. 14).
This final observation is very relevant for our corpus, which – as will be explained in the
following section – deals with a dynamic, sensitive and continually changing issue.

3. The language of migration: Main characteristics and corpus building

As a social phenomenon migration is multidimensional: it covers legal issues, sanitary
questions, and human rights of migrants; it also involves work conditions, family relations and
issues of abuse, property, or punishment. This multidimensionality is also reflected in the texts

6
An illustration of “physiological synonymy” is for the authors the case of “set-top-box”. Twelve different terms
or variants were registered for this concept in their Italian corpus. However, they consider that this proliferation
of terms is justified, as different terms are used in different language contexts, from different user groups. On
the other hand, “pathological synonymy” is originated by the coexistence of English loan terms along with
Italian terms describing the same concept. According to Bertaccini et al., this coexistence is arbitrary and yet
not functional.

Parallèles – numéro 30(2), octobre 2018 24

Elpida Loupaki Synonymy in the domain of migration: Sign of changing mentalities?

connected to migration. These cover a wide variety of genres and are issued from different
institutions, such as the UNHCR, the European Parliament or national authorities; NGOs such
as the Médecins sans Frontières or Amnesty International, as well as from academic scholars.
As suggested by Riggs, Mälkiä and Budin in their article entitled “Descriptive Terminology in
the Social Sciences” (1997, pp. 184-196), “The first step in a descriptive terminology project
involves identification of a subject field and representative documentation of its literature”. In
this sense we tried to make an inventory of all texts types related to migration (see Table 1).

no Genre Text Type Number of

Texts Used
EU documents (directives, resolutions, 84
1 Legal texts
regulations, rulings of the Court of Justice of the
(legally binding
European Union, conventions)
or non-binding)
Greek documents (Official Government Gazette)
2 Administrative Public services reports, police instructions, 25
texts frontier authorities documents, health services
guides
3 Academic texts Academic papers on the subject matter of 19
migration, seen from different scientific angles
4 General public NGOs information leaflets, NGOs reports, 28
texts glossaries, press articles, university course
descriptions, blogs

Table 1. Typology of texts

Texts are grouped in four distinct categories, in relation to their communicative settings
(mainly sender, receiver and target). The three first categories are characterized by a higher
degree of specialisation, while the fourth category contains texts addressed to the general
public of a less specialised nature.
It is clear that the language of migration is not an independent and well defined specialised
type of discourse. It could be argued that it forms part of legal/ administrative language, as a
high number of texts are legal texts; it could also be asserted that it forms part of the language
of the social sciences, as numerous academic papers using sociology, psychology or political
sciences as theoretical background are found in our sample; finally, NGOs reports mixing
specialised language and general language or press articles are also an important part of this
discourse. In all cases, terminology in the domain of migration does exist and is strongly
influenced by the multiplicity of media involved in its production.
In order to obtain a balanced corpus in the domain of migration, we attempted to include the
majority of text types mentioned above. According to McEnery, Xiao and Tono in their
reference book Corpus-Based Language Studies, “…classifying and characterizing text
categories is highly relevant to any attempt to achieve corpus balance” (2006, p. 16). However,
as we were working for the IATE term database, EU texts were given priority7. Our corpus

7
This priority is reflected in the number of EU documents (see Table 1).

Parallèles – numéro 30(2), octobre 2018 25

Elpida Loupaki Synonymy in the domain of migration: Sign of changing mentalities?

includes both texts originally written in Greek and EU documents, mainly translated from
English. Although according to the EU principle of language equality all language versions are
considered original, the fact that a large amount of texts are translations may have implications
in terminology with special reference to synonymy.
As we pointed out in the previous section, there are different approaches to synonymy, most
of which focus on the relation of synonymous terms with the concept or the kind of
equivalence. In this paper, we intend to focus on a different aspect of synonymy, i.e., its
production setting. It should be stressed that as our corpus contains a big amount of translated
texts, we intend to examine the relation between the translation setting and the choice of a
term. Furthermore, to shed light on the synonymous terms found in the corpus, we shall
examine the factors influencing the appearance of synonymy. Some relevant questions are as
follows:
1. Is one synonym preferred over another in different linguistic environments?
2. Does one synonym have different connotations than others?
3. Is there a change in terms preferred in relation to the date of the document?
All these findings are expected to provide an answer to the question formulated in the title of
this paper: Is synonymy a sign of changing mentalities? If, as Discourse Analysis has already
demonstrated, language reflects the way we perceive the world and even sometimes
determines it (cf. for instance Fairclough, 1989; Hodge & Kress, 1993; Van Dijk, 1993) maybe it
is worth studying whether differences in naming things could suggest a change in mentalities.
The change in mentalities is here understood as a more tolerant, more solidary, more informed
approach to social issues, such as migration.

4. Data analysis
The data in this study has, in the first place, been analysed manually; then the results were
cross-checked by automatic processing using AntConc.8 In particular, two sub-corpora were
used: the one contains Greek texts from NGOs, blogs and the press and includes 69.445 words
and the second sub-corpus contains legal documents, both binding and non-binding, and
includes 396.667 words.9 Based on the analysis of our corpus, 169 terms in the domain of
migration were extracted for the language pair English-Greek.10 Out of 169 English terms we
found 58 synonyms in the Greek language for 25 concepts. Synonymy was identified after a
comparative study of the definition in both English and Greek for each term extracted. The
starting point was the English term, as the majority of concepts are introduced into the Greek
reality via English. It is worth mentioning that for some concepts, synonyms may exceed the
number of seven, as is the case for the concept “acculturation”.

8
AntConc is a freeware corpus analysis toolkit for concordancing and text analysis. For more information see
www.laurenceanthony.net/software/antconc/ (last accessed 13/01/17).
9
I would like to thank all my students for their hard work and enthusiasm. Special thanks go to N. Troupkos and
D. Petsa who helped me with the corpus building.
10
All terminology records created for the IATE project are available on the site of TermCoord, at the following
address: termcoord.eu/universities/universities-projects/, (last accessed 13/01/17).

Parallèles – numéro 30(2), octobre 2018 26

Elpida Loupaki Synonymy in the domain of migration: Sign of changing mentalities?

English term Greek synonyms Back

translation11
πολιτιστική επαγωγή cultural
induction
acculturation [politistikí epaγojí]
πολιτιστική διείσδυση cultural
penetration
[politistikí δiízδisi]
πολιτιστική αφομοίωση cultural
assimilation
[politistikí afomíosi]
επιπολιτισμός acculturation
[epipolitizmós]
εκπολιτισμός enculturation
[ekpolitizmós]
Definition:
πολιτιστική ενσωμάτωση cultural
the processes of change in artifacts, integration
[politistikí ensomátosi]
customs, and beliefs that result from
the contact of two or more cultures πολιτιστική προσαρμογή cultural
adaptation
[politistikí prosarmojí]
πολιτιστικός εγκλιματισμός cultural
[politistikós eŋglimatizmós] acclimatization
Table 2. Example 1a

During our analysis we tried to track the origin of the term or at least find some references
about its source. For this purpose, we searched both in our corpora and in the IATE term
database to find the particular text from which the term was extracted.12 The examination of
these synonyms revealed different parameters influencing synonymy. These are as follows:
The first parameter determining synonymy is the author; as texts are issued from different
organizations/ institutions, differences in naming the same concept are observed. For
instance, for the term “acculturation” previously mentioned four of the Greek synonyms come
from different institutions.

11
According to Larose (1989, p. 83), back translation was initially used during the Latin era, in order to judge the
precision and correctness of a translation in relation to its source text. To this end, back translation is a word-
for-word rendering and does not produce a fluidly readable text. Back translation is here used in order to
demonstrate the differences between synonym terms.
12
One of the basic requirements for an IATE project is that terms should not be already incorporated in the IATE
for the same domain. At the time we worked on this project all terms that we have chosen were not available,
however today some terms are already incorporated in the IATE.

Parallèles – numéro 30(2), octobre 2018 27

Elpida Loupaki Synonymy in the domain of migration: Sign of changing mentalities?

English term Greek synonyms Author

πολιτιστική επαγωγή UNESCO

acculturation [politistikí epaγojí]
πολιτιστική διείσδυση UNESCO
[politistikí δiízδisi]
πολιτιστική αφομοίωση Eurovoc
[politistikí afomíosi]
Master’s Thesis,
Aristotle University of
επιπολιτισμός Thessaloniki
[epipolitizmós]
πολιτιστική ενσωμάτωση ELIAMEP13
[politistikí ensomátosi]
Table 3. Example 1b

Other examples where different authors propose different terms are as follows:

English term Greek synonyms Back translation Author

well-founded fear of βάσιμος φόβος δίωξης founded fear of FRA14

persecution persecution
[vásimos fóvos δíoksis]
βάσιμος και founded and UNHCR
Definition: a threat to δικαιολογημένος φόβος justified fear of
life or freedom on δίωξης persecution
account of race,
[vásimos ké
religion, nationality,
δikeolojiménos fóvos
political opinion or
δíoksis]
membership of a
particular social
group is always
persecution
Table 4. Example 2

13
Greek Institute for European and Foreign Policy (non-profit organisation).
14
European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights.

Parallèles – numéro 30(2), octobre 2018 28

Elpida Loupaki Synonymy in the domain of migration: Sign of changing mentalities?

English term Greek synonyms Back translation Source

Enculturation πολιτισμοποίηση enculturation University of Patras
Definition: the [politismopíisi]
process by which
πολιτισμική cultural Democritus
individuals acquire
μεταβίβαση transmission University of
the knowledge,
Thrace
skills, attitudes, [politismikí
and values that metavívasi]
enable them to
become
functioning
members of their
societies
Table 5. Example 3

English term Greek synonyms Back translation Source

cultural mediator διαπολιτισμικός Technological
διαμεσολαβητής Educational
Definition: a intercultural
Institute of Epirus
professional [δiapolitizmikós mediator
representative with δiamesolavitís]
the task of
πολιτισμικός Heinrich Boell
facilitating
διαμεσολαβητής Foundation
communication Cultural mediator
and understanding, [politizmikós
both on linguistic δiamesolavitís]
and cultural level,
between service
seekers of ethnic
minorities and
functionaries in
agencies or public
service offices, self
presenting in an
equidistant and
neutral way
between the
interested parts.
Table 6. Example 4

In academic contexts, difference in terminology used – as in examples 3 and 4 – can sometimes

be intentional, indicating theoretical shifts between different scholars, between different
“schools”. Our findings confirm the principle of polyhedral perspective of the concept,
introduced by Cabré (2003).

Parallèles – numéro 30(2), octobre 2018 29

Elpida Loupaki Synonymy in the domain of migration: Sign of changing mentalities?

Another parameter influencing synonymy is the date of publication. For example, for the term
“domestic violence” we can find four different terms in the Greek language, two of which date
from 1998, one from 2006 and one from 2011. It is worth mentioning that both terms used in
1998 are periphrastically expressed and are no longer in use. This phenomenon is also related
to the so-called life-cycle of terms, where the retrieval of a term from a term bank is the last
stage. It is also worth mentioning that a quite new term found in texts recently published is
“βία μεταξύ ερωτικών συντρόφων” [violence between sexual partners] which is a term used
in the science of psychology and has also an abbreviation. This term was not found in our
corpora as texts were selected during 2013-2014.

English term Greek synonyms Back Syntactical Date

translation structure
domestic συντροφική βία intimate Adj. + noun 2011
violence/ violence
[sindrofikí vía]
intimate partner
violence
Definition: ενδοοικογενειακή intra-familial Adj. + noun 2006
βία violence
[the] behaviour
by an intimate [endoikojeniakí vía]
partner or ex-
βία μέσα στο σπίτι violence Noun+adv. 1998
partner that
inside the
causes physical, [vía mésa sto spíti] +prep./article+
house
sexual or noun
psychological βία μέσα στην violence Noun+adv. 1998
harm, including οικογένεια inside the
physical +prep./article+
family
aggression, [vía mésa stin noun
sexual coercion, ikojénia]
psychological
abuse and
controlling
behaviours
Table 7. Example 5

The time of publication can also be influential even for texts issued from the same
organization, as demonstrated in the following example:

English term Greek synonyms Back Institution Date

translation
voluntary return εκούσιος voluntary European 2001
επαναπατρισμός repatriation Parliament
[ekúsios
epanapatrizmós]

Parallèles – numéro 30(2), octobre 2018 30

Elpida Loupaki Synonymy in the domain of migration: Sign of changing mentalities?

Definition: Act of εκούσια επιστροφή voluntary European 2007

a non-national return Parliament
[ekúsia epistrofí]
(whether lawful
or unlawful) οικειοθελής unforced European 2008
returning to his επιστροφή return Parliament
or her country of [ikioθelís epistrofí]
origin or to a
third country εθελούσια willing return European 2015
following his επιστροφή Parliament
own request, or [eθelúsia epistrofí]
within the time-
limit set for that
purpose by the
return decision.
Table 8. Example 6

Another parameter affecting synonymy appears to be the sensitivity of the political issues
discussed. A typical example of this category is “irregular migrant”/ “irregular migration”:

English term Greek synonyms Back translation

irregular migrant παράτυπος μετανάστης irregular migrant
[parátipos metanástis]
Definition: person who, παράνομος μετανάστης illegal migrant
owing to unauthorised [paránomos metanástis]
entry, breach of a
condition of entry or the παράνομος μετανάστης Illegal migrant without
expiry of his or her visa, χωρίς έγγραφα papers
lacks legal status in a [paránomos metanástis
transit or host country xorís éŋγrafa]
μετανάστης χωρίς migrant without
νομιμοποιητικά έγγραφα legitimating documents
[metanástis xorís
nomimopíitika éŋγrafa]
μετανάστης χωρίς migrant without
έγγραφα documents
[metanástis xorís éŋγrafa]
άτακτος μετανάστης unruly migrant
[átaktos metanástis]
Table 9. Example 7

The terms “irregular migration” and “irregular migrant” have gradually replaced the terms
“illegal migration” and “illegal migrant” in the English-speaking legal order. The new terms are
considered to be more politically correct, although, as pointed out by IOM, “there is no clear

Parallèles – numéro 30(2), octobre 2018 31

Elpida Loupaki Synonymy in the domain of migration: Sign of changing mentalities?

and universally accepted definition of irregular migration”.15 In the Greek-speaking legal order
the terms “irregular migration”/ “irregular migrant” have different renderings. For example, in
the European Pact on Immigration and Asylum issued in 2008, the English term “irregular
migration” is translated “παράνομη μετανάστευση”, which is normally the equivalent of
“illegal migration”. Furthermore, our research in the sub-corpora has demonstrated that until
2015 the term “παράνομος μετανάστης” was mainly used in both original texts produced by
the Greek government (i.e., police authorities, ministries, etc.) and in translated EU documents
either referring to “illegal migrant” or to “irregular migrant”. One hit of the term was equally
found in a document of the United Nations Regional Information Center for Western Europe
(UNric). Over the last years, a discussion has been open concerning the terminology used for
this concept; some alternatives proposed are “παράτυπος μετανάστης” [irregular migrant],
“μετανάστης χωρίς νομιμοποιητικά έγγραφα” [migrant without legitimating documents],
“μετανάστης χωρίς έγγραφα” [migrants without documents – which is apparently coined from
the French term “sans papiers”] “άτακτος μετανάστης” [unruly migrant].16 In our sub-corpora
we only found hits for “παράνομος” (69 hits) “παράνομος χωρίς έγγραφα” (1 hit) and
“παράτυπος” (8 hits). All hits of “παράτυπος” registered in our sub-corpora come from one
document issued in 2013 by Human Rights Watch; at that period the use of the term
“παράτυπος” was strongly supported by NGOs and left-wing ideological circles. Further
research in the data base of legal EU documents, Eur-lex17, in more recent documents have
demonstrated that starting from 2015 the term “παράτυπος” is more systematically used in
EU legal documents too. The main problem arises with the terms “παράνομος” [illegal] and
“άτακτος” [unruly] that both have negative connotations in Greek. In particular, “παράνομος”
means illegal, whereas “άτακτος” is a lexical unit generally used either for small children or for
rebellious troops.

5. Discussion
As demonstrated by data analysis, there are three main factors generating synonymy that can
operate separately or in combination:

1. The author
2. The date of publication
3. The sensitivity of the issue
The multiplicity of authors naturally constitutes a major reason for synonymy. As is usually the
case, different authors may have different perspectives on the same issue, especially in
academic contexts. Even when authors are EU institutions, differences in naming the same
term do occur. It is worth making a special reference to the use of translated texts as
documentation. For instance, as pointed out by Kirsten Malmkjaer (1998), the main problem
with using parallel texts in corpus analysis is that the target text “represents one individual’s
introspection”. Moreover, the identity of these individuals may be totally different; from in-
house translators with years of experience and access to all tools available to sub-contracting

15
Key Migration Terms, International Organization for Migration, www.iom.int/key-migration-terms [last
accessed 17/01/17].
16
All synonyms here presented were discussed in a terminology network initiated by the European Commission
and each solution has been documented by reference either to legal documents or to high quality press.
17
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/homepage.html.

Parallèles – numéro 30(2), octobre 2018 32

Elpida Loupaki Synonymy in the domain of migration: Sign of changing mentalities?

free-lancers with no academic qualifications. This argument is reinforced by the COTSOES

handbook (2003, p. 44), where it is stressed that translations can be trustworthy only when
they have been completed under favorable conditions. Such conditions involve time
restrictions, understanding the purpose of the translation, the quality of the original, etc.
Finally, in relation to the multiplicity of authors in the EU, it should also be kept in mind that
before IATE, i.e., before 2004, every EU institution had its own term database and coordination
between different terminologies was rare.
Another phenomenon related to synonymy observed here is the lack of standardization,
especially in the social sciences. This is a reality already demonstrated by Riggs, Mälkiä and
Budin (1997) and it could be associated with the fact that most of the work in terminology
management concerns more technical fields. The lack of investment in social sciences along
with the absence of linguistic policy are some of the reasons behind it.
Furthermore, the factors of time and sensitivity of the issue are very indicative in relation to
synonymy here examined. When a new term/ new reality emerges in the Greek environment
its first renderings may be unfortunate. There are different examples of terms that were
translated in a way that didn’t guarantee their incorporation into the target language.
Gradually, as the Greek community gets more familiar with the concept, better renderings are
proposed by experts, translators or terminologists. In this way, both time and sensitivity are
important factors.
Finally, to answer our initial question: “Is synonymy a sign of changing mentalities?” In fact,
our findings suggest that some synonyms reflect a change in mentalities. For instance, the
process of standardization for the term “domestic violence” or the multiplicity of synonyms
for the concept of “irregular migrant” may also be explained by the growing attention paid to
these delicate issues. More evidence is needed in order to confirm such an argument, however
for the time being we can assert that terminology management in the domain of migration
would be of great help to both migrants and Greek citizens.

6. References
Bertaccini, F., Massari, M. & Castagnoli, S. (2010). Synonymy and variation in the domain of digital terrestrial
television. Is Italian at risk? In M. Thelen & F. Steurs (Eds.), Terminology in everyday life (pp. 11-19).
Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Cabré, T. (1998). Terminology. Theory, methods and applications. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Cabré, T. (2003). Theories of terminology: Their description, prescription and explanation. Terminology, 9(2),
163-199.
Χαραλαμπάκης, Χ. (1992). Νεοελληνικός Λόγος. Μελέτες για τη γλώσσα, τη λογοτεχνία και το ύφος. Αθήνα:
Νεφέλη. [Charalambakis, Ch. (1992). Modern greek discourse. Studies on language, literature and style.
Athens: Nefeli]
COTSOES (2002). Recommendations for terminology work. Berne: SFBL.
Fairclough, N. (1989). Language and power. London: Longman.
Fernandez-Silva, S., Freixa, J. & Cabré, T. (2008). A cognitive approach in terminology. Presentation at the
conference Cognitive Linguistics between Universality and Variation, Dubrovnik.
Fernandez-Silva, S. & Kerremans K. (2011). Terminological variation in the source texts and translations: A pilot
study. Meta, 56(2), 318-335.
Freixa, J. (2002). La variació terminològica: Anàlisi de la variació denomitiva en textos de different grau
d’especializació de l’àrea de medi ambient. University of Barcelona.
Freixa, J., Fernandez-Silva, S. & Cabré, T. (2008). La multiplicité des chemins dénominatifs. Meta, 53(4), 731-747.
Hodge, B. & Kress, G.R. (1993). Language as ideology. London: Routledge.
Kerremans, K. (2010). A comparative study of terminological variation in specialized translation. In C. Heine &
J. Engberg (Eds.), Reconceptualizing LSP. Online proceedings of the XVII European LSP Symposium, (pp. 1-
14). www.asb.dk/fileadmin/www.asb.dk/isek/kerremans.pdf.

Parallèles – numéro 30(2), octobre 2018 33

Elpida Loupaki Synonymy in the domain of migration: Sign of changing mentalities?

Kuryško, G. F. (1993). Problems of terminological synonymy. In IITF-Series 3, Selected readings in Russian

terminology research (pp. 102-111). Vienna: International Network of Terminology.
Larose, R. (1989). Théories contemporaines de la traduction. Presses de l’Université du Québec.
Loupaki, E. & Maslias, R. (2017). Challenges in managing terminological resources: The case of an IATE project.
In P. Faini (Ed.), Terminological approaches in the European context (pp. 400-412). Newcastle upon Tyne:
Cambridge Scholars Press.
Malmkjaer, K. (1998). Love thy neighbour: Will parallel corpora endear linguists to translators? Meta, 43(4), 534-
541.
Mayer, F. (2002). Sinonimia ed equivalenza. In M. Magris, M.T. Musacchia, L. Rega & F. Scarpa (Eds.), Manuale di
terminologia. Aspetti teorici, metodologici e applicative (pp. 115-133). Milano: Hoepli.
McEnery, T., Xiao, R. & Tono, Y. (2006). Corpus-based language studies, an advanced resource book. London:
Routledge.
Palmer, F. R. (1976). Semantics. A new outline. Cambridge: CUP.
Riggs, F. W., Mälkiä, M. & Budin, G. (1997). Descriptive terminology in social sciences. In S.E. Wright & G. Budin
(Eds.), Handbook of terminology management (pp. 184-196). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Temmerman, R. (1997). Questioning the univocity ideal. The difference between socio-cognitive terminology and
traditional terminology. Hermes, Journal of Linguistics, 18, 51-90.
Van Dijk, T. A. (1998) What is political discourse analysis? Belgian Journal of Linguistics, 11, 11-52.
Wüster, E. (1979). Einführung in die allgemeine Terminologielehre und terminologische Lexikographie. Wien:
Springer.

Elpida Loupaki
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
Department of French Language and Literature
54124 Thessaloniki
Greece
eloupaki@frl.auth.gr

Biography: Elpida Loupaki is Assistant Professor in Descriptive Translation Studies and

Terminology at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. She teaches general translation,
specialized translation and terminology management at both the Translation Department and
the EMT Master Program in translation. Her main research interests include EU translation,
news translation as well as translation and ideology. She has published a number of articles in
conference proceedings and collective volumes. She is a member of the European Society for
Translation Studies (EST) and of the Hellenic Society for Terminology (ELETO). She is the
Treasurer of the Hellenic Society for Translation Studies.

Parallèles – numéro 30(2), octobre 2018 34